Much as he comes off as the nicer guy, I can't see how Obama can win on Nov. 6. The best that can be said about Obama is that he didn't plunge the US in another needless war. He'll probably go down as a transition president, muich like Jimmy Carter in between the Watergate scandal (Gerald Ford doesn't count) and the rise of Ronald Reaganomics. For better or worse, however, Romney is no Reagan.
So answer me this very simple question: Who decides who gets nuclear weapons?
Let me add to that: Why is Israel allowed to have nuclear weapons? Even if we assume that all of Israel's neighbors want to wipe it off the face of the Earth, none of these neighbors currently have nuclear weapons. Israel already has the best military force in the Middle East.
Geeks should vote out Obama because he's the No.1 stooge of Big Media. Obama owes his election to Big Media. Even that supposed bastion of rightwing misinformation, Fox News, has been relatively nice to Obama. Why? Because Murdoch knows Obama and the Democrats have been pushing the Big Media agenda in terms of favorable regulation and persecution. Republicans are less inclined to support Big Media because its conservative wing frowns on the sex, violence, profanities, etc, of pop music and the movies.
5: No "?????" needed. MS would own the enterprise smartphone market, lock/stock/barrel. The only thing MS might have to deal with is the EU (and they can always make a version of Exchange just for that geographic region), but in the US, this would completely shut down Android from the enterprise now and in the future.
No company can succeed by focusing solely on the US. This is something Hollywood, IBM, Apple, etc have known for the longest time. So your Trojaned advice (are you a Google fan in disguise?) isn't gooing to work. Microsoft's best bet for the future is to place nice, act stupid like Romney for a while, then unleash thier killer device/service. I don't know what that is, but I suspects is buried somewhere in Microsoft Research, something 10x awesome than the Kinect that will put Google Glass to shame.
Hybrid rocket engines cannot give you the mass fraction to get into orbit.
And why not? I'm not a rocket scientist, but there's nothing in the literature I've read thus far that says hybrids can't be scaled up.
Those lightweight hulls cannot withstand the temperatures associated with re-entry from orbit.
True. But this has always been a puzzle to me. Why is heat shielding less important going up than going down? Why has nobody invented a spacecraft that can aerobrake without turning into a fireball? "Descent" velocity shouldn't be higher than escape velocity, right?
I fear seeing the urban equivalent of the unmanned aerial vehicle. If anything these ULVs (unmanned land vehicles) should be confined to supervised bomb disposal work. No general purpose robocops, please. Would-be drivers should still be tested for their road skills, just as pilots have to be licensed even when it's already possible to fly a plane by autopilot.
But taking your post seriously: I don't expect machines to be smarter than us. Or at least all of us. What I fear seeing in the future are a select class, enhanced via cybernetics or genetics (or both), lording it over the rest of the human race. There would be a kind of cybernetic divide, analogous to today's digital divide, between this enhanced "uberclass" and the non-enhanced, technologically disadvantaged underclass. Of course, this is the dystopian scenario. The singularity could, after all, turn out to be a geek utopia.
While I appreciate (the existence of) the service, methinks this is a trademark suit just begging to happen. I mean take a look at their logo [png graphic]. It really looks like an official Google site. In this age of massive information sharing, I have my doubts about patents and copyrights in general.
However with patents, I'd give the trademark owner the benefit of the doubt (you're not necessarily evil if you sue for trademark infringement), unless your trademark happens to be a pure (uncombined) dictionary word (in English or whatever language) or a common or well-etablished proper name (e.g. Smith or Madonna). Thus, I'd throw out any lawsuits involving Apple(tm) or Oracle(tm) but not Facebook(tm), Microsoft(tm), Apple Computers(tm) or Apple Records(tm). Obvious parodies are another matter, so there might be room for site names like Googlevil.
[*] I'm using trademark in the general sense to refer to symbols or names that make up the business identity of a company.
When this thing has been field tested and gone down in price...
I think this is the point of a lot of non-portable high-technology. You manufacture them to gain experience because maybe, just maybe, there'll soon be a market for robot servers. I mean, look at electric cars. There are a lot of companies trying to make one, and yet it's less profitable (if at all) than the standard gas/diesel models.
Japan has a rapidly aging population, so having a significant, if not exactly huge market, for service industry robots is by no means a long shot. Perhaps the future will be one robot to do them all, cut and wash your hair, give you a massage and perhaps, uhm, other things. But who knows, maybe specialist robots will be the rule. One robot to wash you hair, another to cut it, still another to give you a mani/pedicure.
As a teenager in the house might say tldr. But I have my theories on the rise of texting. Texting is cheaper than voice calls, while at the same time more portable than email. With the focus on "cheaper", I suspect most of those teenagers are using non-smart phones (perhaps feature phones but no iPhones or Androids) which would allow them to use more advanced communications methods (like IM or Facebook). Google and Apple still have their work cut out.
I'm probably not the first to note the similarity of the paper's title to that cliché about rock stars and their groupies. One has to wonder how much the authors were influenced by the Zeitgeist of the sixties, the so-called Flower Power era.
Still it makes for an interesting read that shows how much we already knew about space before Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn finally reached low earth orbit. Maybe a doped astronaut isn't such a bad idea, getting high in the high of space.
There's a confusing reference to "containing malicious executables" in the first sentence of the summary, which appears to be a nearly direct quote of the first few paragraphs of the article itself. However, the emails only contain a "link" to the malware, which, of course, is less exciting news, since that's what some s(p/c)ammers already do. (To be sure, this is corrected in the second sentence which mentions the "messages contain a link" to the file.) This is a two-stage browser-based attack, which uses social engineering via email as its point of entry.
Incidentally, the link to the article is to a site hosted by a anti-virus vendor, rather than an independent security company. So take it all with a grain of salt or puff of powder.
I see a double standard in the way you praise Facebook gaming while "dissing" open source games. First, you say that we should consider Facebook games as just as good as "real" games. On the other hand, you also say that "the state of open source games is not good." But for every popular Facebook game (e.g. Farmville, Mafia Wars), I can download dozens of FOSS games that are just as good or even better. So okay, maybe these FOSS games are just knockoffs of some commercial game. But aren't those Facebook games that you say are "fun to play" also knockoffs of, let's say, Sim City? Oh well, I'm logging off now and playing another round of Megaglest and Sauerbraten.
The technology's best application is probably in outer space, where we don't have to worry about wavelengths (since there's so much more sun out there). I can even envision its application as a possibly more compact plant substitute for the life support system of a long-duration space flight, say, to Mars.
When I skimmed the summary I thought it was gray goo time already. On closer reading, however, it appears that the molecules still need to be given a push to reassemble. The article doesn't answer the question of how much energy is needed to remove the surfactant.
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Much as he comes off as the nicer guy, I can't see how Obama can win on Nov. 6. The best that can be said about Obama is that he didn't plunge the US in another needless war. He'll probably go down as a transition president, muich like Jimmy Carter in between the Watergate scandal (Gerald Ford doesn't count) and the rise of Ronald Reaganomics. For better or worse, however, Romney is no Reagan.
So answer me this very simple question: Who decides who gets nuclear weapons?
Let me add to that: Why is Israel allowed to have nuclear weapons? Even if we assume that all of Israel's neighbors want to wipe it off the face of the Earth, none of these neighbors currently have nuclear weapons. Israel already has the best military force in the Middle East.
Geeks should vote out Obama because he's the No.1 stooge of Big Media. Obama owes his election to Big Media. Even that supposed bastion of rightwing misinformation, Fox News, has been relatively nice to Obama. Why? Because Murdoch knows Obama and the Democrats have been pushing the Big Media agenda in terms of favorable regulation and persecution. Republicans are less inclined to support Big Media because its conservative wing frowns on the sex, violence, profanities, etc, of pop music and the movies.
No company can succeed by focusing solely on the US. This is something Hollywood, IBM, Apple, etc have known for the longest time. So your Trojaned advice (are you a Google fan in disguise?) isn't gooing to work. Microsoft's best bet for the future is to place nice, act stupid like Romney for a while, then unleash thier killer device/service. I don't know what that is, but I suspects is buried somewhere in Microsoft Research, something 10x awesome than the Kinect that will put Google Glass to shame.
You forgot the almighty Defense Industry. That won't go out of fashion even if the U.S. sinks a few trillion more dollars in debts.
Also, the agriculture "industry" (haha). Yes, I think American agriculture is an industry, the land that invented the term "factory farming".
Chinese corruption is all about maintaining the ruling class's collective privileges not about cold hard cash or the proverbial Swiss bank account.
Hybrid rocket engines cannot give you the mass fraction to get into orbit.
And why not? I'm not a rocket scientist, but there's nothing in the literature I've read thus far that says hybrids can't be scaled up.
Those lightweight hulls cannot withstand the temperatures associated with re-entry from orbit.
True. But this has always been a puzzle to me. Why is heat shielding less important going up than going down? Why has nobody invented a spacecraft that can aerobrake without turning into a fireball? "Descent" velocity shouldn't be higher than escape velocity, right?
I fear seeing the urban equivalent of the unmanned aerial vehicle. If anything these ULVs (unmanned land vehicles) should be confined to supervised bomb disposal work. No general purpose robocops, please. Would-be drivers should still be tested for their road skills, just as pilots have to be licensed even when it's already possible to fly a plane by autopilot.
I'd mod you funny.
But taking your post seriously: I don't expect machines to be smarter than us. Or at least all of us. What I fear seeing in the future are a select class, enhanced via cybernetics or genetics (or both), lording it over the rest of the human race. There would be a kind of cybernetic divide, analogous to today's digital divide, between this enhanced "uberclass" and the non-enhanced, technologically disadvantaged underclass. Of course, this is the dystopian scenario. The singularity could, after all, turn out to be a geek utopia.
While I appreciate (the existence of) the service, methinks this is a trademark suit just begging to happen. I mean take a look at their logo [png graphic]. It really looks like an official Google site. In this age of massive information sharing, I have my doubts about patents and copyrights in general.
However with patents, I'd give the trademark owner the benefit of the doubt (you're not necessarily evil if you sue for trademark infringement), unless your trademark happens to be a pure (uncombined) dictionary word (in English or whatever language) or a common or well-etablished proper name (e.g. Smith or Madonna). Thus, I'd throw out any lawsuits involving Apple(tm) or Oracle(tm) but not Facebook(tm), Microsoft(tm), Apple Computers(tm) or Apple Records(tm). Obvious parodies are another matter, so there might be room for site names like Googlevil.
[*] I'm using trademark in the general sense to refer to symbols or names that make up the business identity of a company.
How about a netbook called FaceBook? Or a co-branded release of Firefox or Chrome called FaceBrowser?
When this thing has been field tested and gone down in price...
I think this is the point of a lot of non-portable high-technology. You manufacture them to gain experience because maybe, just maybe, there'll soon be a market for robot servers. I mean, look at electric cars. There are a lot of companies trying to make one, and yet it's less profitable (if at all) than the standard gas/diesel models.
Japan has a rapidly aging population, so having a significant, if not exactly huge market, for service industry robots is by no means a long shot. Perhaps the future will be one robot to do them all, cut and wash your hair, give you a massage and perhaps, uhm, other things. But who knows, maybe specialist robots will be the rule. One robot to wash you hair, another to cut it, still another to give you a mani/pedicure.
As a teenager in the house might say tldr. But I have my theories on the rise of texting. Texting is cheaper than voice calls, while at the same time more portable than email. With the focus on "cheaper", I suspect most of those teenagers are using non-smart phones (perhaps feature phones but no iPhones or Androids) which would allow them to use more advanced communications methods (like IM or Facebook). Google and Apple still have their work cut out.
I'm probably not the first to note the similarity of the paper's title to that cliché about rock stars and their groupies. One has to wonder how much the authors were influenced by the Zeitgeist of the sixties, the so-called Flower Power era.
Still it makes for an interesting read that shows how much we already knew about space before Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn finally reached low earth orbit. Maybe a doped astronaut isn't such a bad idea, getting high in the high of space.
There's a confusing reference to "containing malicious executables" in the first sentence of the summary, which appears to be a nearly direct quote of the first few paragraphs of the article itself. However, the emails only contain a "link" to the malware, which, of course, is less exciting news, since that's what some s(p/c)ammers already do. (To be sure, this is corrected in the second sentence which mentions the "messages contain a link" to the file.) This is a two-stage browser-based attack, which uses social engineering via email as its point of entry.
Incidentally, the link to the article is to a site hosted by a anti-virus vendor, rather than an independent security company. So take it all with a grain of salt or puff of powder.
Actually I kind of like the idea of a lawn mower that sucks. It makes for a cleaner garden after the blades of grass are cut. Vacuum mower, anyone?
Hey, editor! This is in the wrong section.
Jellyfish, strictly speaking, are software. (Unless you reinforce them with an exoskeleton.)
I see a double standard in the way you praise Facebook gaming while "dissing" open source games. First, you say that we should consider Facebook games as just as good as "real" games. On the other hand, you also say that "the state of open source games is not good." But for every popular Facebook game (e.g. Farmville, Mafia Wars), I can download dozens of FOSS games that are just as good or even better. So okay, maybe these FOSS games are just knockoffs of some commercial game. But aren't those Facebook games that you say are "fun to play" also knockoffs of, let's say, Sim City? Oh well, I'm logging off now and playing another round of Megaglest and Sauerbraten.
The technology's best application is probably in outer space, where we don't have to worry about wavelengths (since there's so much more sun out there). I can even envision its application as a possibly more compact plant substitute for the life support system of a long-duration space flight, say, to Mars.
When I skimmed the summary I thought it was gray goo time already. On closer reading, however, it appears that the molecules still need to be given a push to reassemble. The article doesn't answer the question of how much energy is needed to remove the surfactant.